This week, Pastor Jermaine continued on with our Take Me To Church series on the topic of Waypoint’s call to be a multicultural and multi-ethnic church.

Pastor Jermaine had three primary points about why seeking racial reconciliation is important:

1. It’s Biblical.

Too often we want to focus on righteousness in lieu of justice, when the two of them are Biblically inseparable. Too often we apply the Bible to our eternal destiny, but not to our modern, current circumstances.

Too many people in the historical church have disconnected the message of the Gospel from the reality of living racially reconciled lives. This is problematic, and should not be.

It’s not good enough to have perfect orthodoxy (doctrine) and broken orthopraxy (action). The call of God on our lives is to have both our doctrine and our action in line with one another and the Gospel.

2. It’s relational.

The family of God is one marked by reconciliation on all fronts; including age, gender, and race. We are the Kingdom of God, and we should hurt when our brothers and sisters hurt. As the body of Christ we have a mandate to continue this journey of multiethnic reconciliation.

3. It’s continual.

This is a call that is going to cost all of us something, and it will be a continual journey. We need to all keep loving one another as we struggle.

At some point we must rise above our earthly allegiances (to our denominations, our political parties, our nationalities..) and ascend with allegiance to the Kingdom of God. We must answer the call of God, whatever the cost.

Waypoint has a call to intentional multi-ethnicity, which includes running to areas of pain, linking arms with our brothers and sisters who are different from us, asking the Lord to restore our compassion, and stepping out to care for one another practically. We are to take up the cause of Christ, even when it brings up tension and becomes uncomfortable. This is not a call that can be undertaken by one person, it requires the entire body of Christ. We need to make room in our lives and our hearts for those who are different from us.